The tomtom will take a short break for the middle of the year but we will be back with a post on mid-year orientation on 17 July. In the meantime don’t forget that you can access articles in the Archive.

With the project team busy working on things behind the scenes, on Friday 7 June, Professor James Arvanitakis launched the Inclusive Teaching Conversation Series, sharing his experiences of life at university. The stories and experiences he shared with us started from his first day at university. As a first in family student, he recounted how he sat through his first lecture (for film studies, which wasn’t one of his courses) and, based on the advice of his mother, carried both his passport (so people knew who he was) and a container of lamb to feed new friends.

His first year wasn’t brilliant in terms of grades and it would be fair to say that after being called into the Dean’s office (where it was suggested he might be better following his father’s footsteps into a trade) a young James could have been part of that statistic we call ‘attrition’. Luckily for us (and his current students) James completed his studies and after an early career that involved stretches in the finance and not-for-profit sectors, he returned to university for postgraduate study and eventually to teach.

He received the Prime Minister’s Award for Australian University Teacher of the Year in 2012, and now teaches into large classes at University of Western Sydney where the student cohort is culturally diverse and where a large percentage of students are also the first in their family to attend university.

James’ focus on the student is evident in almost everything he speaks about. By donning his pirate eye patch, he challenges conventional delivery techniques and has introduced new strategies which he continually tweaks including the use of social media. Alongside his research and publication interests, he keeps his teaching material current and engages with his students by letting them use their language to unpack topics such as gender and racism.

It got me thinking about my first experience of tertiary education, moving from assisting academics and researchers doing field work, to becoming a mature-aged student sitting in a lecture theatre listening to the theories of Freud. As a mature-aged student, I thought I understood what it meant to study. I thought I would fly through my degree and its assessments. But the reality was quite different. I remember the pressures of working part-time (to pay my mortgage, student fees and to eat!), learning how to write an essay and understanding that I was expected to interact with my lecturers and ask questions. Along with assignments, group work and

becoming a critical thinker I was also trying to maintain some sort of a social life. And if you’d asked me what I wanted to do with my degree, little did I know that some of the position descriptions I’ve ended up with didn’t exist in 1987. The same can be said for this student cohort, will they walk into a job after graduation that didn’t exist 10 years ago?

Sitting in the workshops that accompanied the launch and observing James’ teaching, he modelled many of the principles for inclusive teaching during each of the workshops. So for those of you who have not accessed the new pages, I would strongly suggest that you visit each of the principles and its supporting strategies. The strategies can be used for you in two ways, as a guide to help you design your practice to ensure that it’s inclusive or as a tool to reflect upon and refine your teaching:

As a project team, we invite staff in each of the three colleges to share with us any resources that you have developed which reflect inclusive teaching approaches and if you would like to be involved in promoting or working alongside the project team to incorporate inclusive teaching strategies into your teaching we encourage you to make contact with us!

New resources and professional development opportunities will be announced through various channels once they are uploaded and available for use by staff.

Don’t forget that you can find the rubrics on the English Language Development Project page in the Teaching Resources area of the RMIT staff webpage. Please contact Barbara Morgan at the Study and Learning Centre for more information (barbara.morgan@rmit.edu.au).

This year, there are three projects that we at the DSC have united under the banner of ‘Developing Your Teaching’. The projects focus on developing teaching practice and providing staff with many opportunities to engage in hands-on, practical professional learning. Schools will also be able to customise sessions to suit their teaching needs. The projects address university strategic directions, namely teaching in new learning spaces, inclusive teaching and particularly support the professional learning of sessional staff in the DSC.

Sessional staff are key players in a productive and engaging learning and teaching environment but many are positioned in uncertainty. This uncertainty is pressured with increased demands on compliance, increased student numbers, changes in accommodation and new educational technologies, shifts in course offerings to accommodate student diversity, student expectations and industry needs. In this demanding environment, accommodating the needs of sessional staff in the teaching and learning space is critical. Connecting with a community of learners to advance practice is a priority to improve both staff and student satisfaction.

1. Connecting Sessional Staff

The Connecting Sessional Staff project will provide paid professional development for sessional academic and teaching staff and is to begin in Semester 2. With staff and School guidance, a symposium and School workshops will be designed to:

address individual learning and teaching needs

share, present, discuss and reflect on teaching and learning experiences

School-based peer learning networks will be offered in all DSC Schools for all staff teaching in New Learning Spaces in Semester 2 2013. Staff teaching in these spaces will be invited to join a School network that will run regular meetings, facilitated by the Senior Advisor, Learning and Teaching. These meetings will include support for staff to trial new ideas and invite expert speakers to talk about their teaching practice. Additionally, staff will have the opportunity to undertake one of four approaches to enhance their professional learning. These include:

self-directed study supported by extensive web resources

peer partnership program

peer review of teaching

a module from the Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Education.

3. Inclusive Teaching and Assessment Practices

This project addresses the needs of a diverse student population through an ‘inclusive approach’ to curriculum design, teaching delivery and assessment. The project team will work collaboratively with academic and teaching staff to:

provide and assist with professional development resources and delivery in inclusive teaching.

promote the principles for inclusive teaching practice across the university.

The six principles developed are: Design Intentional Curriculum; Offer Flexible Assessment and Delivery; Build a Community of Learners; Teach Explicitly; Develop a ‘Feedback Rich’ Environment; and Practice Reflectively.

What next?

All three projects are in their planning phases and now is a good opportunity to ‘feed forward’ about what areas of learning and teaching most need developing, enhancing or advancing.

1. Connecting Sessional Staff: A Google survey form will be posted from your School’s L&T committees in the next fortnight to gather your ideas. Results from this survey will launch us into arranging schedules, themes and facilitators. We will keep you posted.

2. New Learning Spaces: L&T Committees will soon be advised andProgram Managers and staff timetabled into these spaces will receive email notifications early in Semester 2.

3. Inclusive Teaching and Assessment Practices: This project and its website will launch on 7 June. Andrea Wallace will be providing an update in a future post on the tomtom.

If you want to learn more about how to ditch your PowerPoints and teach like a pirate, James Arvanitakis (recipient of the 2012 Prime Minister’s Australian University Teacher of the year) will be sharing his stories and model practices in a series of workshops (11 and 12 June) to coincide with the lunchtime launch of the Inclusive Teaching and Assessment Practices project.